Address Graduate Women: Women, Information and Power

Women's Affairs Minister Ruth Dyson
Address to NZ Federation of Graduate Women - ‘Women, Information and Power’
Christchurch College of Education, Dovedale Ave, Ilam, Christchurch
9.00am, Saturday, 27 September 2003

Rau rangatira maa,
tenei te mihi ki a koutou i runga i te kaupapa o te ra.
Tena koutou, tena koutou, tena koutou katoa.

[Distinguished guests, greetings to you gathered here for this purpose today. Greetings once, twice, three times to you all.]

Thank you for the invitation to be here. I bring apologies from the Prime Minister Helen Clark, and greetings from my Christchurch colleagues Lianne Dalziel, Tim Barnett, Clayton Cosgrove and Mahara Okeroa.

It is a pleasure to be opening your triennial conference, following what I am sure was a very successful public forum last night on the conference theme of ‘Women, Information and Power’.

You had three impressive speakers at the forum: Equal Employment Opportunities Commissioner Judy McGregor, managing director of Ngai Tahu Communications, Gabrielle Huria, and deputy editor of the Press, Cate Brett. It is an honour to follow in their footsteps this morning, and I see from the programme that you can benefit from their experience again over the weekend in a number of workshops.

I would like to acknowledge your president Rae Duff, past president Dorothy Meyer, and a number of international guests, including:
·Jennifer Strauss, president of the Australian Federation of University Women;
·Louise Croot, vice-president of the International Federation of University Women;
·Lily Vesikul, president of the Pacific Graduate Women’s Network; and
·Lydia Maeke, from the Solomon Island Graduate Women’s Association.

Finally, I want to thank the conference organisers for the work they have done to make this event possible, and extend a warm welcome to all the participants.

Theme
The theme of this conference, ‘Women, Information and Power’ is pertinent not only in New Zealand, but around the world. So much so that one of the two key focuses of the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women for 2003 is:
“participation and access of women to the media and information and communication technologies, and their impact on and use as an instrument for the advancement and empowerment of women”.

It is widely accepted that information is power - and it is equally true that on a global level, only a small number of women and women’s organisations have access to this power.

Education
The key is education - and I want to commend your federation for working locally, nationally and internationally to improve the status of women and girls, promote lifelong education and enable graduate women to use their expertise to bring about positive change.

New Zealand women are keen to keep on learning throughout their lives. In fact, women’s participation in post-compulsory education in this country is now higher than men’s at all ages and across all providers, including universities, polytechs and community education programmes.

A number of government strategies will help us address the challenges facing women students. One of the objectives of the Tertiary Education Strategy is to improve the participation and achievement of women in skills, industry and qualification areas where they have traditionally had low participation, and engage with Maori women and their communities.

Announcements in this year’s Budget also show how serious we are about closing the digital divide, which impacts significantly on women’s ability to access information.

Information and communications technology is an incredible tool for learning, and ICT skills are essential for work and for life in the modern world. That’s why we are investing almost $78 million over the next four years to develop this technology in the school and early childhood sectors. We want everyone to have the ability to connect safely and securely, taking advantage of the vast online learning and teaching opportunities that exist.

Business
New Zealand women are also doing well in business. Our most up-to-date picture of women entrepreneurs comes from the 2002 Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, an annual international study which last year covered 37 countries.

The study showed that 38 per cent of New Zealand’s entrepreneurs are women, ahead of most countries including Australia, the United Kingdom and Canada, and on a par with the United States.

It also showed that:
·New Zealand women lead the world in having the necessary skills and motivation to start a new business;
·we rank second highest as a country in which starting a new business is a socially acceptable career option for women; and
·we are world-ranked in encouraging women to become self-employed or start a new business.

Maori were among the big success stories identified by the study. When taken as a ‘country’ in their own right, they have the seventh highest proportion of entrepreneurs of all those surveyed.

Maori women make up slightly more than half of all Maori entrepreneurs, many assisted by the Maori Women’s Development Fund. An important source of Maori women’s entrepreneurial strength comes from their cultural and social renaissance, especially in education and the revival of the Maori language. They are increasingly turning their role as cultural guardians into successful business opportunities that benefit not only themselves but also their whanau, hapu and iwi.

Politics
On the face of it, women are relatively well-represented in politics in New Zealand. Today, women hold the four top constitutional positions in New Zealand, namely, the Governor-General, Prime Minister, Attorney General and Chief Justice.

Unfortunately, their stunning success is not matched by equal representation of women in parliament, or in central or local government. In the current Labour-Progressive government, women make up around a third of MPs and roughly the same proportion of ministers. While this is significantly better than any of the other political parties (and most other countries), we are still too light on the ground.

The only way to ensure that there are plenty of girls at the top in politics and indeed everywhere, is to ensure that organisations’ structures promote women’s involvement at all levels, as your federation does. New Zealand women are great leaders – there’s plenty of evidence of that in this room – and we must work hard to encourage and support each other in leadership roles.

My own background reflects this. I represent the electorate of Banks Peninsula, originally Lyttelton. My electorate elected the first-ever woman Member of Parliament, the first-ever Minister of Women’s Affairs (I am the second from the electorate), and more women than any other electorate.
I came into politics through the women’s section of the Labour Party. I was elected as one of two women’s representatives on the governing body of the party in 1984, when Helen Clark and Elizabeth Tennet were on the executive and Margaret Wilson had just been elected as president.

So I have a great history to look back on in my electorate, and have come into politics surrounded by strong women, and those women have continued to support and encourage me.

In some ways, I believe, the achievement of more women in key positions has created a double-edged sword. Some younger women are now complacent and believe that further efforts for women were unnecessary, while others believe that efforts for women have gone “too far”.

I find this latter point somewhat hard to analyse with logic. If I went around the country saying that I had a plan for young people – a plan that would give young people in New Zealand more opportunity, more security, a better quality of life and a chance to fully contribute to society, no-one would say: “That’s terrible. That’s to the detriment of older New Zealanders!”

They would say: “That’s great, because we all know that if we give young New Zealanders better opportunities, it’s of benefit to our whole society.”
Well, exactly the same applies to women. Actions that benefit New Zealand women are to the advantage of us all – not to the detriment of men!

CEDAW
You have asked me to spend some time talking about key issues in my Women’s Affairs portfolio. Two that spring to mind are the development of a Women’s Action Plan and preparation of our report on the status of New Zealand women for the United Nations CEDAW committee, something we have to do every five years.

Last time we reported to CEDAW, the New Zealand government had two reservations:
·The first was on the paid parental leave issue, which I am pleased to say we removed this time.
·The second was the restriction of women in the armed forces, which will be reviewed in 2005.

The other key points on the status of women in New Zealand that I reported were:
·our emphasis on the halting of privatisation of publicly funded social and health services;
·replacement of the Employment Contract Act with the Employment Relations Act - this change recognises the inequality between employers and employees and promotes collective bargaining;
·the ‘whole of government’ approach called ‘reducing inequalities’ to reduce the inequities between Maori women and other women in New Zealand;
·the commitment to implement the Treaty of Waitangi;
·changes to human rights legislation which mean that all government legislation is now subject to the non-discrimination standard in the act;
·the Action Plan for Human Rights, being developed by the Human Rights Commission, which will promote a wide range of human rights, including civil, political, economic and cultural rights;
·the requirement that all papers going before our Cabinet Social Development Committee includes gender implications statements (and my intention to include this requirement for papers to other Cabinet Committees);
·establishment of a dedicated Equal Employment Opportunities Commissioner within the Human Rights Commission;
·the inquiry into the Films, Videos and Publications Classification Act;
·the passing of the Prostitution Reform legislation – aimed at safeguarding the human rights of women in prostitution and protecting them from exploitation;

I reported that women in the paid labour force has risen over the past years, but that challenges to this include the persistence of a gender pay gap, occupational segregation and the increasing difficulty of achieving work-life balance.
I noted our change in approach to single parents and widows, which helped them into paid work rather than adopting a punitive approach.

I reported on our changes to property legislation and the Te Rito Family Violence Prevention Strategy.

So what did they say?

Well, the committee members were very engaged and engaging – it was an excellent discussion!

They “cautioned against complacency in a seemingly ideal situation” – which is a genuine reaction which we often take for granted in New Zealand. We are well ahead of other countries with regard to our valuing of women.

They said New Zealand had a good chance of becoming a good practice example to many countries of the world through ensuring respect for the cultural traditions and development of indigenous communities.

They also said they were impressed with the exceptional presence of women in constitutional and political offices - but as the first country to grant women the right to vote, that was to be expected!!

The committee said that, among the areas that still required attention were the issues of gender stereotypes; the situation of migrant and indigenous women, in particular, Maori and Pacific women; the financial repercussion of wage gaps; and high suicide rates among young women.

They particularly noted our lack of affirmative action programmes – targets and measures.

So, in spite of the progress we have made, the future continues to pose challenges for New Zealand women.

There is still significant inequality between men and women and between different groups of women.

We need to recognise the special place and role of Maori women. Persistent inequalities continue to face many other groups of women, including Pacific, rural, refugee and migrant women, women with disabilities and low-income women.

Work-life balance
At the same time – if we are not to burn out – we must tackle women’s family/whanau responsibilities. We have worked hard in this country for women’s participation, particularly in the paid labour market and there have been great improvements in that area.
What we haven’t done yet is get the right balance between paid and unpaid work.

As a measure of our commitment, our government is setting up an inter-agency steering group, chaired by the Department of Labour, to develop family-friendly and other policies promoting work-life balance. All policies and practices that have an effect on the ability of employees to balance paid work and other activities will be considered, and public consultation will occur.

Work-life balance is not just an issue for women. Overall, a decade of a deregulated and competitive environment has reduced the quality of life for many workers of both genders. A lot of men have more stress in their lives than is healthy. But women have paid the greater price because of the additional level of stress that accompanies our role as carers.

Maori and Pacific women face particular stresses because of their broader family responsibilities, concentration in low paid work, higher level of community work and the younger age structure of their population groups.

Pay equity
Pay equity is another issue where there is still a lot of work to be done.
I am delighted that the issue is back on the political agenda for the first time since the National Government repealed the Employment Equity Act in 1990 – its first legislative move after its election.

It is obvious that, left to its own devices, the market is not going to close the income gap between the sexes. But it is also obvious that the structures that we had to deliver pay equity prior to 1990 are no longer available to us.

Pay equity – equal pay for work of equal value – is about much more than simply weighing one job against another. If true equity is to be achieved in the paid workplace, the undervaluing of women’s work in general needs to be addressed, as do the particular inequities that face Maori, Pacific, migrant, young workers and workers with disabilities.

There are two main contributors to the gender pay gap:
·the time women take out of the paid workforce to bear and rear children; and
·the lower levels of pay for the caring, education and people professions where women are more likely to work.

But this isn’t the whole story. The gap exists not just when women reach the age when they spend less time in paid work because of their children, but right from the beginning of their careers.
University graduate surveys show that male commerce graduates start out in their careers earning on average nearly $5000 a year more than women of the same age with the same qualifications.

The same applies in the legal profession. So what is it about commercial law that makes it so more “valuable” than family court work?

Some of the gender pay gap comes down to gender stereotyping in pay rates and negotiations.

The taskforce recently established by Margaret Wilson will look at the overseas work studied by the Department of Labour and the submissions on the pay equity document from the Ministry of Women’s Affairs.

It will make recommendations to the government soon about how we can implement pay equity in the core state sector, and health and education sectors. We will then look at how that model can be extended to the private sector.

Women’s Action Plan
It’s because of issues like economic independence, general well-being and work-life balance that we need a women’s action plan. Consultation meetings were held throughout the country earlier this year, and I want to take the opportunity to thank all those involved.
If we want to make sure that all women have information and are empowered, we need a clear and whole-of-government approach to the issues that concern us now and agreement on action for the future.

Nominations
We need to look at the number of women we appoint to statutory boards. Fifteen years ago, the figure was 20 per cent - now it’s around 40 per cent, and the Ministry of Women’s Affairs’ goal is to increase it to 50 per cent by 2010.

The ministry’s Nominations Service database, which currently has almost 1000 women registered on it, is one vehicle to achieve this. It receives requests from me, other ministers, government departments and NGOs for nominations of women to a wide variety of bodies – and I encourage you to add your names to it if you have not already done so.

We need better data in key areas to monitor our progress.

We need specific affirmative action programmes for women.

We need a Minister of Women’s affairs to be our advocate around the Cabinet table.

Ministry of Women’s Affairs
And we need a separate Ministry of Women’s Affairs to lead these issues. When I took on this portfolio, I found the ministry less focussed than is ideal, and less in touch with women throughout New Zealand than I wanted them to be. I was also concerned that they didn’t have the respect of other government agencies, or the links that were necessary to support and encourage departments’ active participation in policies and programmes impacting on women.

This is not surprising, given that they had gone through nearly a decade of being ignored under the National Government. So it was a key task for me to ensure that these issues were addressed.

Following a recent review, our government has decided the ministry will be retained and strengthened. We are advertising for a new chief executive, who will be charged with the particular role of addressing capability issues - improving policy development, management systems and processes, organisational culture, and cross-governmental relationships.

My goal is that, within a year or so:
·the ministry is leading and driving policy change for women;
·its reputation and credibility are enhanced; and
·it has close links with women’s organisations like your own, and other organisations, both inside and outside government.

Conclusion
Many of the issues are the same as those we faced years ago – but the solutions are not.

Our successes to date – and there have been many, well worthy of celebration – have been due to the women of New Zealand working together, setting priorities and making strong and steady progress to achieving them.

I appreciate the support and challenges that women give me and as your minister I look forward to continuing to work with, and for, you to ensure that women have both information and power.

I wish you all the best for the conference, and thank you once again for the invitation to speak.